Reports of the Australian wildlife television presenter Steve Irwin's death have long been either exaggerated or expected. On previous occasions, Irwin, known worldwide for his Discovery Channel programmes, was allegedly killed by a black mamba and a komodo dragon. This time, sadly, the reports were true - the barb from a stingray punching into his heart in what most experts regard as a freak accident.

Irwin, whose death has come at the age of 44, was no stranger to danger. He was born in Essendon, near Melbourne, Victoria, to Lyn and Bob Irwin, both naturalists, and for his sixth birthday received as a pet a 3.6m-long scrub python called Fred. The family moved north to Beerwah, on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, and in 1970 bought the land for a small reptile park. It grew in size, went through various changes of name, was celebrated for its displays of crocodile feeding, and in 1990 became the Australia Zoo.

Years of learning from his father to relocate rogue crocodiles in the mosquito-infested swamps of north Queensland led to Steve volunteering to trap problem crocodiles in populated areas and remove them to the family zoo. His television breakthrough followed an encounter in 1990 with producer John Stainton, who was shooting a commercial there. The following year, Irwin took over the running of the Australia Zoo when his parents retired, and met an American visitor there, Terri Raines, from Eugene, Oregon.

They married six months later, and the following year film from their honeymoon became the first episode of the series The Crocodile Hunter (1992). Thus began a television career featuring oversize khaki shorts, ankle-length boots, an enthusiastically thick Australian accent and an ability to shout "Crickey, he's angry" when Irwin and the film crew had hauled some deadly (and quite reasonably angry) poisonous snake, or lizard, out of the bush by the tail. By the late 1990s he was one of Australia's biggest media celebrities with television shows like The Crocodile Hunter, The Crocodile Hunter's Croc Files (1999) and The Crocodile Hunter Diaries (2002) reaching a worldwide audience of half a billion viewers.

The Crocodile Hunter was rapidly taken up by America's Discovery Channel and Irwin became a US celebrity. His ability to exude an almost violent enthusiasm, talk extremely loudly and, seemingly, live a charmed life grabbing some of the world's most poisonous creatures out of the bush, spawned a growing cult for "red in tooth and claw" wildlife television. Other broadcasters criticised his programmes as exploitative and the antithesis of proper natural history programmes, where cameramen spent months trying to capture intimate moments of rare creatures. For Irwin, the selling point was the more immediate the better, with helicopters and multi-camera crews capturing every moment.

In 2002, his career went from mainstream television to Hollywood, initially with a role with Eddie Murphy in Dr Doolittle 2, wrestling an alligator and losing an arm, and then with a leading role (although he says he never saw the script) in The Crocodile Hunters: Collision Course, with his wife. That script revolved around a crocodile which swallowed a black box from a US spy satellite and led to a pursuit involving Irwin and the CIA. The film recorded 10m viewers in its opening weekend.

The year 2004 went less less well. Irwin was criticised for holding his infant son near a crocodile pool while feeding chickens to a four-metre long crocodile. Local authorities and children's rights groups said it was tantamount to child abuse; he claimed he was in "absolute and complete control". Later in the year he was attacked for allegedly filming too close to penguins, seals and humpback whales in the Antarctic. Despite the controversy, Irwin remained hugely popular, with Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz visiting Australia Zoo that year; the previous year, he had been among leading figures invited to meet President George Bush on a state visit.

It is most likely that Irwin would have preferred to have been killed by a saltwater crocodile, his favourite creature, but he would, nevertheless, have relished telling an audience about the creature which killed him, the stingray, "with a 10-inch long serrated spine which flexes if it is frightened". Stainton was on the boat 1,200 miles off Port Douglas on the Great Barrier Reef where Irwin was attacked: "He died doing what he loved best and left this world in a happy and peaceful state of mind. He would have said 'Crocs Rule.'"

Irwin is survived by Terri, his daughter Bindi Sue and son Bob.

· Stephen Robert Irwin, television wildlife presenter, born February 22 1962; died September 4 2006